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Thanks jif

It’s not just the ‘extremely’ of the preamble - but that each of the four moves put the new positions to the, ahem, ‘periphery’ - that ties in with the theme, that I found so clever by the setter.

Not sure how many of the ‘outside the square’ possibilities are real, or coincidences. I’m assuming ‘Zee’ is too relevant to be mere coincidence...

Lovely puzzle, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I have two loose ends. Please can someone help me to parse 17d and 21d?

Hi Kitsune,

17d 3 letter abbreviation for "straight" (as in sexuality) + 3 letter word for "look" repeated but the second time is one letter short/nearly.

21d 4 letter word for "force" inside a 2 letter word for 'agreement' (in Italian)

Thank you, Brendan. The fog clears!

I’ve completed grid with 8 entries in wrong place, found the 4 pertinent words to highlight and the 5 unnumbered entries, but have no idea of the source. It doesn’t appear that I need that to complete puzzle - am I right? What is other people’s take on this?

Diver, see my post @28. You don't need to but googling the essence of the 8 moved answers and the shaded words with the 4 letter person should clarify things.

Thanks, granama1

Personally I found it quite satisfying that the extremes of extra words gave both the title of the work and the author (initials and surname). Also, the work itself is entertaining.

That was a joy. Long, long ago an aged Dutch Professor said to a friend “You are to go to Cambridge? I take my head off to you!”. And at said alma mater, it was widely asserted that the copy of Wittgenstein’s DPhil thesis lodged in the University Library bore the external examiner’s comment: “This is a work of genius; and well up to the standard required.....”

I’m prepared to repeat both sentiments having had “loadsafun” with this elegant, playful and unashamedly inconsequential puzzle that must have taken hours of labour to perfect.

To “zee” can I add “cha” and “ale” as other possible jeux d’esprits?